Europe trip plan Summer 2013
 

I am in the early stages of planning a trip next summer to Europe. Here is a rough idea of what I have in mind. We have been to Paris and London before, but not Scotland.

- fly to London, stay three nights (want to do a day trip one day to the Costswolds)
- take the train to Paris and stay four nights
- take the train back to London, and then catch the train to Glasgow
- rent a car and tour Scotland for one week
- fly home from Glasgow

Does this sound do-able, or will it be too exhausting?

The charter airline (cheaper) that I am hoping to use only flies to London Gatwick, Glasgow or Manchester, otherwise we would fly to Paris first.

I would truly suggest you fly out of Paris, not out of the UK.

Please see Gardyloo's posts on the outrageous fees the UK is chaging for exiting the company via air.

http://www.fodors.com/community/air-...ree-ticket.cfm

Given that, I would train to Edinburgh, as it's a much more beautiful city to see. The train up the east coast is beautiful and about 4 hours long.

The following is a tour company, but you can use their routes to get an idea of where to tour. http://www.rabbies.com/

if you can sort out the flights, fly into Edinburgh [or Glasgow], train to london, eurostar to Paris, fly home.

I recommend taking a flight from Paris to Scotland, there are many cheap airlines that run from Paris to Glasgow/edinburgh. I just checked for the 25th July this year (keeping the seasons the same) on www.skyscanner.com and Ryan air had a one way flight for 43 Euro, Easy jet 135... Given that you will also basically win a day... more then worth it. You sound like your flexible if you are renting a car... so you can be flexible to price on the airport of arrival.

Apart from that your timings sound fine, should be a nice trip.

However you arrange the order of things - there is no need to return to London to get to Scotland.

You could:

• Fly into Scotland, train to London, train to Paris, fly home from Paris

• Fly into London, train to Paris, fly to Scotland, fly home from Scotland.

• Fly in to London, train (or fly) to Scotland, fly to Paris, fly home from Paris

or anything similar

what jj said.

in case you are not familiar with the "open jaw"concept, what you are looking for is the "multi-city" button next to the "round trip" button. the total should not be much more than a round trip ticket.

<i>Please see Gardyloo's posts on the outrageous fees the UK is chaging for exiting the company via air.</i>

It's the final cost that is important not how the cost is made up. Saying "I'm not flying from the UK as the taxes are too high" just means you cut your choices and probably end up paying more.

Thanks for all of your suggestions. I hadn't considered flying from Paris to Scotland. Once we get our dates nailed down I will compare all of the above options.

Like I said the charter airline (Thomas Cook) is about $500 cheaper p.p., but only flies to London and/or Glasgow. But I will explore all possibilities.

it's not very far from glasgow to Edinburgh, whether by train or car.

so no need to exclude Edinburgh from your itinerary.

you could do London -Paris - Edinburg/Glasgow - home.

PS - being flexible on your dates may save you a lot of money. I recently booked flights to Sri Lanka, and saved £300 EACH by being able to return on the monday rather than the sunday.

that's more than paid for an extra night - in fact it works out at the cost of our car and driver for the whole trip.